You've Got to be Kidding Me
by Wild Weeb
Summary: The words inscribed on her skin since birth would one day be spoken to her by her soulmate. That was the way things worked. But waiting for that time to come was getting increasingly difficult for her.


**A/N: I literally just whipped this up in a couple of hours for pyrexprodigy's birthday so I'm sorry for crappy quality.**

 **Rated for mentions of cutting, so be aware.**

* * *

Miku stared at the words on her wrist, having long memorized the patterns of the letters.

 _I didn't mean for this to happen._

The teal-headed girl knew as well as anyone else with a mark that these were words her soulmate would one day say to her, but they seemed so ambiguous, something any one of her friends could say almost casually. So how could she know, really, just by some marks on her skin since birth?

She supposed her soulmate would have her words, too, so maybe that was her only way of knowing. But then, she had no way of knowing just when those words would be spoken, or where they would be marring her soulmate's skin. What if they were on a place they preferred to cover up? Then what was Miku supposed to do, search them?

"Oi, Miku?" The voice of her friend Cul snapped her out of her reverie, and she looked up to face the redhead. "What's up? You seem out of it."

She only shook her head. "It's nothing."

Cul's eyes shot down to her wrist and back up. "You thinking about your soulmate again?"

Miku didn't answer, choosing to turn her eyes away and gaze off into the distance. If you considered the furthest bookshelf she could see from where they were sitting in the library a distance.

The red-haired girl sighed, more than used to this routine with her longtime friend. "You don't even know what kind of words they'll be. It's pointless to worry about it."

"Easy for you to say," Miku retorted, snapping a bit more harshly than intended. "You already know Gumi's your soulmate."

Now Cul was the quiet one. "I don't _know_. I just know she has my words. She's...never said these." She rubbed a finger over the letters tattooed on her left bicep. "It could be a coincidence."

Miku said nothing at first. Then, quietly, gently, "But you love her, right?" A small nod from the redhead, and then they both fell silent.

She hated doing that. Bringing up Cul's unrequited love for Gumi only because she was jealous that they were even halfway there. Ambiguous as her own words were, no one had actually said them to her yet. But maybe Cul's situation was worse: she'd said the same words Gumi had imprinted on her side, and still been rejected. Miku didn't know where she found the strength to face Gumi every day like there was nothing wrong between them. How dare she mope about her own situation? Some people didn't find their soulmates until they were well out of high school, past college even, and she herself was only a junior in the former. What could she expect?

"I'm sorry," she said, voice barely above a whisper, but Cul said nothing back.

* * *

"Miku?"

The voice was that of a petite girl just a couple centimeters shorter than Miku herself. She sighed and faced her. "Tei."

Tei was holding out a teal notebook. "I got everything I missed." The moment the notebook was in Miku's hands, Tei added a quick, "Thanks again," before scurrying to her own seat. Miku sighed. She wasn't sure if she'd bother calling Tei her friend; the pale-headed teen rarely talked to her when they weren't borrowing each other's notes or studying or something else as academic and barely personal. She didn't even know if Tei had a soul mark, much less what kind or where it was.

She thought again about Cul and Gumi. What if she didn't like her soulmate, or just wasn't attracted to them? That kind of thing was getting more common nowadays, people marrying someone they weren't soulmates with. Or what if her soulmate died before they met? How would she even know? It wasn't like they broadcast people's soul marks when they died.

This was getting ridiculous. She shouldn't even be caring this much. It wasn't like she couldn't be happy without her soulmate, right? Plenty of people without soul marks were fine, after all.

But her eyes drifted down to her wrist yet again.

 _I didn't mean for this to happen_.

In what sort of situation could anyone say something like that to her?

She shook her head and stood, a heavy sigh escaping her lips. This was something she needed to just talk to someone about, someone who wasn't already tired of her fixation on this whole soul mark thing. Which meant her friends were out of the question. Another sigh and she marched over to Tei's desk.

The girl's scarlet eyes met hers before she could say anything. "Miku? Did you need something else?"

"Yeah, um...I'm sorry, can I talk to you? In private?"

Tei stood, slowly. "Class begins in five minutes, though."

Then why had she bothered standing up? "I know, it's just...it's really kind of urgent." Miku felt her face burning. She hadn't thought this through at all. What was she doing, coming to someone like Tei for something so important to her? She hardly knew Tei, after all; why should the other girl care? She should just go sit down and maybe pester Cul later-

"Can it wait?" Miku started. Tei hadn't been asking asking rhetorically; she actually wanted Miku to answer whether they absolutely had to take care of this now or if it could wait until a better time.

There was a weird pinching feeling in Miku's chest. No time to dwell on it now, though.

"Y-yeah," she stuttered out, surprised that Tei cared enough to be willing to listen to whatever she had to say, not even knowing what it would be. "Yeah, it can wait."

"Then...meet you in the library, maybe? After school?" Miku didn't understand why Tei's tone was so...so what? So something. Something kind and warm and, for reasons Miku couldn't begin to guess, caring. Suddenly finding herself unable to speak, she nodded almost robotically. Why was she so flustered?

"Okay," Tei affirmed, and Miku found herself back in her own seat, staring at the desk, waiting for class to begin so it could end and she could just vent all her problems and uncertainty with this stupid curse scribbled forever on her wrist.

* * *

She saw the sun hitting Tei's white hair the moment she walked through the door. For a moment Miku wondered how Tei had arrived before her, but that wasn't important. What was important was that she had unthinkingly decided to confide in someone she didn't even know about something extremely deep and personal and that she now had to face whatever repercussions may come of that.

Tei saw her, too. She waited for Miku to approach before suggesting, "We should go further back. So we're not overheard or anything."

Miku nodded, choosing not to think about the implications of that particular word choice as she followed Tei deeper into the rows of bookshelves. For a school library it was stocked quite well, Miku noted vacantly, only focused on the pale figure in front of her.

She wasn't quite sure what to do when Tei stopped rather suddenly and sat down. Right there on the floor apparently without a second thought. But Tei didn't seem to have any intention of moving, so she sat right down too. It wasn't like she cared where they were, really, as long as they were in private.

Seeing Tei look at her so expectantly, she felt the heat returning to her cheeks. This was going to happen however it happened, too late to go back now, so let's get it over with.

"Sorry. It doesn't seem all that important but I just...I needed someone to vent to and all my friends are sick of listening to me."

Tei's white head shook. "No, that's fine; I don't mind. You can tell me anything, I promise."

Miku gulped. Then, with a deep breath, she poured it all out. All her hopes and concerns with this stupid soul mark, all the questions she had that she knew no one could answer, all her hatred of this mark binding her eternally to someone she likely knew nothing about, she let everything out to Tei. She hadn't meant to, but once she was started there was just no stopping. The whole mess was stressing her out far more than it should've been, she knew, and she had to just get it out.

She fell silent when she ran out of things to say. Tei's expression hadn't changed the whole time, staring at her with a look of curiosity and mild confusion. But more than anything Tei looked genuinely interested in everything Miku had to say. Every detail, every word, Miku could swear the girl had soaked up and held close like something precious. If she'd forgotten she was blushing, she sure remembered now.

After a moment Tei finally said, "I get that. I really do." And pale and slender hand lightly gripped the fabric at the bottom of her skirt, pulling up as her leg turned over and exposing her inner thigh. Miku gasped lightly at the dark lines over Tei's skin, right there on her thigh. "I thought the same until just last year. It was...all I could think about. I-I mean...I'm sorry, maybe I shouldn't be telling you all this, but just-"

"Tei." Miku's voice was firm, a sudden coldness to it. She was staring at the distorted words on Tei's thigh, illegible even as she'd inched closer.

The skirt fell back over the mark. "Miku...?" The white-haired girl was a little afraid. Miku was suddenly upset, more so than she had been telling Tei about her own words.

Miku lifted Tei's skirt again. No, there was definitely something else there besides the words. "Tei, what are the other lines? The red ones."

Maybe "red" wasn't quite the word to describe them. "Maroon" might be closer. Maybe even "cerise." But whatever word used, the lines were still there, old and long healed over, cutting through the blacker lines that formed words Miku's eyes wouldn't put together.

Her chest tightened, just a bit. For only a second she lost her ability to breathe. She looked at Tei's face, turned away from hers and eyes welling with tears she refused to shed.

"I-I'm sorry," was her only defense.

Without a second thought Miku wrapped her arms around the girl she'd learned so much about in the past minutes. The girl she wouldn't have thought to talk to just hours ago. The words must have caused her so much pain, for her to resort to trying to erase them.

"No, I didn't...I didn't know, Tei. _I'm_ sorry. I didn't know. You must've suffered so much..." She found her own tears were falling, rolling down her cheeks and spattering Tei's shoulder. The smaller girl was shaking in her arms, either crying or trying desperately not to.

They sat together only a matter of minutes, but it felt so much longer. The whole time they were quiet, embracing each other and nothing more, both feeling the pain not only of their own marks but now of each other's. At the very least that meant neither of them were alone, they weren't the only ones whose thoughts tended to revolve around curses etched into their skin. At least they had each other right now, if nothing else.

Tei sniffed. "I'm sorry, Miku. I...I didn't mean for this to happen. It just..." She sighed. "I don't know. It just."

Miku nodded.

And then froze.

And then laughed.

Well, no, it wasn't much of a laugh, neither out of humor nor spite but just at the irony of this. There was no way. Just no possible way. "I can't believe this. You've got to be kidding me."

The girl in her arms tensed. "Wh...what did you say...?"

They pulled apart and looked at one another in confused disbelief. "M-my mark..." Tei started, fumbling and awkward. "That was...you said-"

"You said my words, too," Miku said, holding up her wrist. "'I didn't mean for this to happen.' Those are my words."

A beat passed. Another.

Then Tei laughed. An actual laugh, not like whatever the noise Miku'd made was. "You said my words. We're soulmates. We're freaking soulmates, Miku, and we didn't even..." She cut herself off as she fell into another fit of laughter. Miku couldn't help but join her.

Of course it would happen like this. Like some cheesy romance that never happens in real life. Of _course_.

But as they sat together in the back of the library, hidden among the countless stories and whispered thoughts bound in paper, crying and laughing, neither could care less that real life shouldn't work so perfectly. Because it had, for them, and that was all that mattered.

* * *

 **A/N: I meant to finish this much earlier than I did so I'm really sorry for that. But happy birthday to pyrexprodigy and I wish I could've done something better for you.**

 **This whole thing was a little loosely based on a Tumblr post asking for a Soulmate AU in which instead of being born with your soulmate's first words to you tattooed somewhere on yourself, you're born with the first words they say to you when they realize they're in love with you.**

 **...I really don't know what else I was trying to do here.**


End file.
